So a colleague of mine who has recently graduated from library school recently learned that she had a paper approved for publication in a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the work of library science students on subjects of general interest to librarians. This week she received a 'proof' of her article which looked good except one thing: the article was dated as if it was from the year 2004.
We talked about this on the phone and I tried to reassure her that it*must* have been a typo because it could not be possible that a publication from a library school would back date their publication to a such an extreme. It couldn't happen.
But being curious, I checked the Library Literature and Information Science Index to see when this organization had published their last issue and was horrified to see that it was "Spring/Fall 2003". I urged my colleague to email the editors to see if the 2004 was in error - perhaps the result of some archaic publication management software?
She got an email back yesterday. It wasn't a typo. At one point, she was told, there was a delay in publishing and in order "to avoid confusion over any missing years" they decided to keep the years consecutive.
DID IT NOT OCCUR TO THESE PEOPLE THAT A SWITCH TO A VOLUME AND ISSUE SCHEME COULD REMEDY THIS PROBLEM? DOES THIS PRACTICE NOT DEFY THE VERY NOTION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY?
But it gets worse. MUCH worse. Guess what that name of this journal is? Come on! Guess!!
It's...
(wait for it)
CURRENT ISSUES IN LIBRARIANSHIP!
You just can't make this stuff up.
2 comments:
That story really is unbelievable! I feel so bad for your colleague who experienced it.
I think it just shows how smart your friend truly is--she published in the field before even *starting* library school?
She's amazing!
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